


Dog Problems

by objectlesson



Category: Descendants (2015)
Genre: Clueless Jay, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Humor, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5079487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay thinks Carlos is replacing him with Dude, so he hatches an absurd and ineffective plan to win back the attention of his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dog Problems

**Author's Note:**

> I deliriously watched Descendants the other night and would have found it completely insufferable had I not been screaming over how miraculously and unintentionally slashy these two cuties were. Spent the next whole day plotting stories, because I apparently have no dignity left. It's fine.

It was Dude’s fault, really, that Jay’s head was pounding and he had a bloody nose. It was Dude’s fault that he was holding an ice pack to the tender, bruised flesh around his eye feeling sorry for himself, sopping up his own stupid blood with his own stupid shirt because Carlos wasn’t around to take care of him like he _used to_. He was out _walking Dude_ like a respectable pet owner, being good at being good or whatever. He had adjusted really well, for the most part. Jay, not so much. 

Jay sniffled, then blew out a spectacular ribbon of crimson-streaked snot into his sleeve. It was really gross, and that made him feel a little better. He let a few coppery droplets fall to his bedspread, knowing that Carlos would scold him later for getting blood all over everything. He thought of all the times he got the worst of a fight back on the Isle, how Carlos would always be there to clean him up, dark brows knit together in exasperation as he told him for the hundredth time _you can’t take on five guys at once, Jay. Don’t be an idiot._

He’d dab at Jay’s scrapes with the tail of his expensive shirt, not caring that it was getting dirty, or at least pretending not to care. Jay knew his _mom_ cared at least; he’d gotten caught stealing from Cruella’s jewelry box enough times to know she was perfectly terrifying when she wanted to be. It felt nice that Carlos was willing to withstand that perfect terror just to wipe gutter-filth from Jay’s face, or something. It made Jay feel special. Or, at least it used to. Before _Dude_. 

The blame Jay placed on Dude was a complex thing. On the one hand, he _knew_ how absurd it was to be jealous of a _dog_. But on the other hand, the bitter truth was that since Carlos adopted Dude, he paid _significantly_ less attention to Jay. Baffled and irritated (but mostly hurt, though he’d never admit it), Jay decided the only way to redirect Carlos’s attention back to him was to aggressively, obnoxiously hit on girls. After all, in the past, the more aggressively and obnoxiously Jay hit on girls, the more attention Carlos paid him. It seemed like a foolproof plan. 

He could always feel Carlos’s eyes boring into his back whenever he was putting on his suave-act, waggling his eyebrows and flexing his biceps in order to get the desired effects, of which there were two: make girls bat their eyelashes at him, and irritate Carlos to the point of physical retaliation sometime in the near future. Jay _did_ like it when girls did the eyelash thing at him, and he wasn’t opposed to kissing and the occasional under-the-shirt boob grab, but anything beyond that started to feel like _dating_ and Jay didn’t have any interest in _that_. Things were different in Auradon. Back on the island, it was customary to sleep with girls and never see them again. That was unheard of here. It was pretty scary. 

Once Jay figured out what ‘dating’ was, he didn’t want any part of it. No, hitting on girls was just a means to an end, and that end was tussling with Carlos De Vil. Arm-punching, tackling, pinching, and shin-kicking were among Carlos’s signature fight-starting moves, and they were all fair game to Jay. Anything that gave him the go-ahead to jump on Carlos’s tiny, whip-thin dancer’s body and overpower him until he was prone and struggling and pathetic was _great_. Jay wasn’t sure why, but he greatly preferred this activity to _dating_. It was normal, he thought, to prefer spending time rough-housing with your best friend, after all, there was no stressful protocol, like offering girl’s jackets and buying them flowers, those weird customs he had no experience with because people just didn’t _do_ that on the Isle. 

Carlos was much easier to be around than girls who wanted to date. Carlos was from the Isle too, he knew the same dirty, convoluted streets all knotted up like ball of twine, Carlos _understood_ what it was to steal, to cheat, to lie, and to be told that was how you were _supposed_ to be. Carlos knew as little about dating as Jay did, and although he was all together better at understanding _goodness_ in all its stupid inconsistencies and idiot protocols, he still wasn’t rushing into the arms of the nearest princess (or prince) and buying her flowers. Jay was at least grateful for that, and grateful that Dude was a dog and not a girl. 

In that moment, the door scraped open and Carlos slid in, followed by the familiar (and kind of infuriating) _click-click_ of Dude’s nails against the hardwood floor. Carlos suddenly remembered he was supposed to be annoyed with Carlos, and made sure to grimace when their eyes met across the room.

“What happened to you?” Carlos asked, scooping Dude off the floor and ruffling his ears before setting him down again. 

Jay continued to glare, like Carlos should _know_ somehow that this was indirectly the fault of his dog. “Lonnie walloped me with her book bag. I have a black eye and my nose is probably busted, where have _you_ been,” he snapped. 

Carlos’s eyes widened, shiny and super-dark. “ _Lonnie_ hit you with her _books_? What did you do to her?” he asked suspiciously. 

Jay shrugged, picking lint off his bedspread and staring at the threadbare fabric, not really wanting to look at Carlos as he admitted, “I asked her out. Again.” 

He risked a glance and Carlos’s face predictably fell, getting flat and sober and totally unsympathetic. “Dude,” he said, making his dog’s ears prick up, “That’s like, three times now. She keeps saying no, and she _told you_ the next time you asked she was gonna dump her soda on you, why did you every _try?”_

Jay frowned. “She didn’t have a soda this time. I thought I was safe.” 

Carlos rolled his eyes so dramatically Jay wondered if he strained something in the process. “Jay. _don’t_ ask girls out if they don’t like you. Just don’t bother. Why do you keep trying with Lonnie? Do you like her or something?” 

“ _No,_ not like that,” Jay said weakly before he paused for a moment, trying to come up with a reason that wasn’t _I asked her out again so you would tackle me for it._ It was a struggle, so he just stayed silent, waiting hopefully for Carlos to come over and punch him in the arm, tackle him, pinch him, or even wipe his blood-crusted nose with the hem of his fancy white and black paisley dress oxford like he used to when they still lived on the island.

Instead, Carlos only sighed and scooped Dude up off the floor again before collapsing onto his bed. He buried his face briefly in coarse, red-brown fur, and Jay watched and just about exploded he was so frustrated. It was not cool to replace your best friend with a _dog_. Not cool at all. He wanted to throw the ice-pack on the ground and yank Dude out of Carlos’s arms and fill the vacancy with himself, pinning Carlos to the mattress simply, easily. A play-fight, just like old times. Hie heart sped up just thinking about it. 

“Whatever,” Carlos said eventually, sounding kind of miserable. “If you don’t like her, and she _obviously_ doesn’t like you, I think that means you should focus your efforts _elsewhere_ don’t you think?” he asked, raising an eyebrow into a sharp, condescending arc. 

_I’m trying,_ Jay thought desperately, wiping a sticky patina of blood from his upper lip, thinking about how the color of it probably matched Carlos’s stupid red skinny jeans. Jay tossed the icepack at Carlos and missed, instead sailing past his head close enough Dude let out a sharp, warning bark.

\---

Jay was starting to notice a pattern. Every time he flirted with a girl in front of Carlos, Carlos _immediately_ started fussing over Dude. It worked like magic. When Jay snuck his arm around Audrey’s shoulder while she showed him something on her phone, Carlos knelt down and adjusted Dude’s collar. When Jay scored in tourney and moonwalked over to the cheerleaders to plant kisses on their cheeks, Carlos pretended to find a thorn in Dude’s paw and suddenly got immersed in “picking it out” on the sideline bench. Jay was beginning to suspect that his methods of competing for Carlo’s attention had actually _backfired_ , and he had only succeeded in making Carlos _more_ obbsessed with his dog. 

Consequently, Jay backed off his flirting game a little bit. The last thing he wanted was to be swimming in girls who were mad at him for leading them on, all while his best friend actively replaced him with a _dog_. However, the damage had been done, and even without Jay mercilessly pursuing any and every girl in a ten foot radius of Carlos, he _still_ felt actively replaced by a dog. Carlos must have decided that Dude was a more loyal and affectionate friend, or something. 

Jay continued to feel really sorry for himself. He was moping on his bed strategically not doing homework and listening intently and self-deprecatingly to Carlos, who was talking to Dude like Dude understood english.Or at least Jay _thought_ it was english. It was hard to tell because it was computer talk, which might as well have been another language. “Hmmm...” Carlos said, tongue poking out between his lips as he bent over his laptop, brow furrowed for a moment before he started furiously jotting down notes. “There’s gotta be an error in the code somewhere, Dude...probably cause of the triple modular redundancy? Dunno. Lemme see.” 

As Jay listened, he unintentionally reduced the midsection of his pencil to splinters. Then he threw it to the foot of the bed, repulsed. This had to stop. 

Before he could think too much about it, Jay slid off his sheets and dropped to all fours. Then he decidedly crawled to the edge of Carlos’s bed, where his red high-top sneakers were curled under his narrow thighs. Carlos didn’t even look up until Jay was right there at his feet, glowering up at him through a mess of hair which had fallen in his face. 

Carlos dropped his pen, face coloring slightly. “What are you doing...?” he asked, sounding a little alarmed. Dude peered suspiciously at Jay from across the mattress. He and Carlos were wearing identical hoodies. It was disgusting. 

“Being a dog, since you like them so much,” Jay snapped. 

“Um.” Carlos’s face _definitely_ colored then, a fierce red blush climbing from his neck up to his freckled cheeks. Then he snapped his knees shut, covering his lap up with a notebook like he was hiding something. 

Jay felt a little wild, a little triumphant. Like he had just stolen something, a valuable jewel, a magic lamp. Without really knowing what he was doing, he leaned in and tried to bite Carlos’s bony knee, instead getting a mouthful of shimmery black fabric. Still, Carlos yelped, even if Jay’s teeth didn’t actually make contact. His already dark eyes darkened with panic, and Jay was outraged that someone with eyes as dark as Carlos could even exist legally in this universe. He sat back on his heels, and crossed his arms. “Why do you like Dude more than you like me? I’m supposed to be your best friend,” he declared, pointing at Dude with an accusatory finger. Now it was all in the open. 

Carlos sputtered a little bit, drawing his notebook closer to him. “Excuse me?! Maybe I like him better because he actually _spends time_ hanging out with me instead of constantly _chasing princesses!_ ” He looked like he regretted it after saying it, like he hadn’t meant to reveal that he noticed or cared about Jay’s habit of princess chasing.

“Dude!” Jay yelled, and although he had not actually been addressed, the dog leapt off the bed and scampered off, perhaps sensing that Jay and Carlos were about to implode in some serious way. “I only flirted with the girls so hard because usually...usually you _notice_ and get all bent out of shape about it! But not you’re so wrapped up in that _dog_ of yours that you don’t even care. ” Jay’s voice kind of dwindled in volume and certainty towards the end of his tirade. Even he realized how stupid it sounded coming out of his mouth, how weird it was to be jealous of a dog, and even _weirder_ to be motivated exclusively by Carlos’s attention or lack thereof. He felt like his stomach turned suddenly to lead in the wake of this realization. 

Carlos had gone very still and very quiet. “...You wanted me to pay more attention to you than Dude...so you paid more attention to _girls?_ How does that even make sense?” 

It didn’t. Jay _knew_ it didn’t make sense. “Uh...” he started, eyeing that notebook Carlos was hanging onto for dear life. In a sudden feat brilliance, he reached for it, grabbing the spine and yanking it away, resorting to what he was good at: theft. Carlos was lithe and sinewy but his dancer’s strength was no match for Jay, and after a few seconds of ruthless squabbling Jay succeeded in wrestling the notebook away. Carlos tried to roll over but Jay was too fast, he pinned him down with a broad palm on the inside of his thigh, holding Carlos splayed. Then, he stared at him. Even in Carlos’s custom made, absurdly shiny drop-crotch sweats, Jay could make out the outline of his erection, the way it was tenting the loose, thin fabric. Jay’s mouth hung open, his insides tightening madly around a growing heat in his gut.

Accepting his loss, Carlos crumpled, collapsing back onto the bed with his red face in his hands, voice reedy with humiliation. “Don’t be mad,” he pleaded. “It’s not my fault, you were, like, two feet from my dick _on all fours_ , what was I supposed to--”

Jay kind of felt like he couldn’t breathe. He definitely couldn't _talk_ , couldn’t make any noise save for a crushed sort of groan. All he could do was climb up onto the bed and straddle Carlos, prying his hands from his eyes so he could actually _look at_ him, look at his freckles and his flush and his eyes so cocoa-dark and shimmering. He didn’t even realize he was leaning down to kiss Carlos until it happened. For a moment there was space between them, and suddenly, everything was wet and burning and perfect. There was a lot of breath, wild and frantic, and then Carlos’s mouth split and slick under his, their teeth bumping together, Carlos’s hands in his hair, twisting and pulling. 

_Oh_ Jay thought, shuddering and more than half hard as he ground down hard against Carlos’s pliable body, heavy between his thighs. _Oh._ Carlos, _Carlos_ who sewed things spent most of his time in front of his laptop and who couldn’t score on the tourney field if his life depended on it, had become _an animal_ under him. He was making these whining sounds into Jay’s mouth, sucking on his tongue and nipping at his lips, graceless and wet and _so damn good_ Jay felt like he was falling off a cliff. 

“ _Shit_ , Carlos,” Jay murmured, pulling away so he could just _look_ at him for a second, his lips plush and swollen and terrible, broken open and undone beneath him. “Is this ok? Are you--”

Carlos laughed, just a messy huff of breath and a smile so sharp and bright it ached to look at. “This is more than ok,” he assured Jay before mouthing messily down his throat, tongue infernally hot against Jay’s pulse. “It’s like, all I’ve ever wanted.” 

Jay stared, a little stunned that this was happening, a little disappointed at himself for not realizing sooner that there was something _behind_ his seemingly innocent desire to push Carlos, to tackle him, to overpower him crush him against any available surface. It all made sense now. He made a fist in Carlos’s hair and pulled, extending his neck so he could get his mouth on it, kissing and biting his skin olive and flushed and freckled. “You’re so, so hot,” he breathed, hands wandering down his sides, his heaving ribs and the firm muscle pulled taut across them. “Wanted you like this for _so long_ and didn’t even know it.” 

Carlos rolled his hips against Jay, breath coming out strangled and syncopated as he mumbled, “Well, _I _knew. That I wanted you, I mean. Didn’t know about you, thought for sure you couldn’t, would never, see me like that.”__

__“Fuck,” Jay said, shaking his head, peeling himself away from Carlos just for a moment so he could look down at him, his hoodie rucked open to reveal a pale sternum and his sweats damp and tented and riding sinfully low on his hips. Jay shook his head, dizzy and hard and all messed up over this. “I see you, dude,” he said in a hush._ _

__Right on cue, Dude leapt up onto the bed, wagging and panting and seemingly pleased that his roommates had worked out prior confusion. Jay had never been so disappointed to see that ugly, scruffy mutt than he was in this moment, and that was following _weeks_ of blaming Dude for all of his problems. _ _

__Dude tried to crawl on top of Carlos’s shuddering stomach but Carlos made a face, shaking his head. “No, boy. Go to your crate. Go on. I gotta pay attention to my _other_ dog now.” He glanced sidelong at Jay, eyes half lidded and sly in this way that made Jay’s stomach drop, _hard_. His dick twitched in pants, and he rocked solidly against Carlos, so very thankful that Dude was getting sent away for the night. He had never been called dog before, not like that, and he was pretty sure it was one of the hottest things that had ever happened to him. He kind of wanted to lick Carlos’s face over it. _ _

__Dude looked a little wounded, but he was obedient if anything so he hopped off the bed, shooting one last mournful look at the two of them as he left. “See?” Carlos murmured, reaching up and grabbing a fistful of Jay’s hair and pulling him down by it, firmly. “All yours.”_ _


End file.
